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John Rich

John A. Rich, MD, MPH, is the Director of the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice and Professor and Chair of Health Management and Policy at the Drexel University School of Public Health. He has been a leader in the field of public health, and his work has focused on serving one of the nation’s most ignored and underserved populations — African-American men in urban settings.

In 2006, Dr. Rich was granted a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. In awarding this distinction, the Foundation cited his work to design “new models of health care that stretch across the boundaries of public health, education, social service, and justice systems to engage young men in caring for themselves and their peers.”

Prior to coming to Drexel, Rich served as the medical director of the Boston Public Health Commission. He earned his Dartmouth A.B. degree in English, his M.D. from Duke University Medical School, and his Master’s from the Harvard School of Public Health. He completed his internship and residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital and was a fellow in general internal medicine at Harvard Medical School. As a primary care doctor at Boston Medical Center, Rich created the Young Men’s Health Clinic and initiated the Boston HealthCREW, a program to train inner city young men to become peer health educators who focus on the health of men and boys in their communities. He received an honorary Doctor of Science degree from Dartmouth in 2007 and now serves on its Board of Trustees.